Do you know what the biggest killer is globally?

- Sponsored by UCL

Flu will kill between 250,000 and 500,000 people this year. While this is a huge number, you might be surprised to know that there are even bigger causes of death across the world that don’t make the headlines as often. It’s the job of population health scientists to understand these factors and develop solutions. Take our quiz to test your knowledge of mortality and global health.

How many did you get right? You might have found some of those figures surprising, especially the last one about reduction in global poverty. There’s plenty more still to be done, because more than one in 10 people in the world still live in poverty and the distribution of poverty is becoming more uneven.

This presents great challenges for the population health scientist. As part of a degree in population health you’ll learn how to examine population health and disease within society and the things that are being done to improve population health. Your efforts could ultimately have a direct impact on the community and the wider world.

Professor Dame Anne Johnson, from University College London, which offers a BSc in Population Health, says: “one of the reasons for starting this degree programme is because there is a vital need for data scientists who understand public health as we move forward into a world where we have an ever increasing availability of data.

“Data is only of use if we are able to extract patterns of health and disease and what we need to do to improve health, and this is where appropriately trained population scientists are key.

“It is very exciting that UCL offers an undergraduate degree in Population Health that brings together disciplines such as epidemiology and statistics alongside the broader social sciences that contribute to our understanding of health.”